By Dave Lahr: For the past years, James Toney has been dying to get a shot at fighting one of the Klitschko brothers. Now 41, ranked #11 in the World Boxing Council, Toney is ranked high enough Vitali or his younger brother Wladimir Klitschko, to fight Toney without taking a lot of heat from boxing fans.

A fight against Toney, although probably a slaughter in the making, would still be an interesting fight for boxing fans because of Toney’s popularity with fans. Indeed, Toney is clearly better known than most of the top 10 heavyweights in the division. Granted, he might be somewhat short at 5’9 and slightly on the heavy side at 217, but Toney fights better than his physical limitations would have you believe. He’s still got a lot of talent and can make his opponents pay for their mistakes.

So maybe Toney will get crushed by either Klitschko, but you got to give the man at least a chance at winning the belt from them. The Klitschko brothers say they want fights that make them money. A fight against Toney probably makes them more money than their recent fights against Ruslan Chagaev and Chris Arreola, two good fighters but not popular ones.

HBO might even be interested in showing Toney-Klitschko, if only due to the sheer spectacle of it. Can you imagine the short 5’9” Toney facing the huge 6’7” 250 pound Klitschko brothers? It would be like giants fight a miniature heavyweight.

Naturally, boxing fans would likely side with Toney because they would see him as a sympathetic figure because of his limited size. I’m sure this is probably the main reason, besides Toney’s advanced age that the Klitschko brothers don’t want to fight him. It might seem as too much of a slaughter to either one of them and they wouldn’t want to take part in a fight that would end up being so one-sided.

However, they might as well forget about that because sooner or later, Toney will likely end up the mandatory challenger for either of them. That’s how boxing goes. Toney won’t even have to fight a top contender to pick up the mandatory spot.

If he keeps winning fights against B level fighters, sooner or later, the WBC or one of the other ranking bodies will push Toney to the number #1 spot. It’ll probably happen overnight like the way that Manny Pacquiao was suddenly pushed to the number #1 ranking in the welterweight division by the WBO not too long ago. Pacquiao has never even beaten a welterweight, and here the WBO is pushing him to the number #1 spot.

The same thing will happen with Toney soon. Toney’s promoter, Joe Goosen, is looking to put Toney in with one of the Klitschko brothers and he’ll probably get his way if he keeps pushing. Vitali is looking to fight Kevin Johnson next, and from there, Klitschko will have to take on his mandatory challenger. However, Toney will have moved up some by then and hopefully he could get a shot against Vitali in the fight after that with any luck.